


That Malexa Scene

by Gyptian



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alex Manes Is An Interesting Mess, Deconstruction, Episode: s02e06 Sex and Candy, F/M, Headcanon, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Misogyny, Implied/Referenced Racism, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Maria DeLuca is a Good Friend, Metafiction, Michael Guerin Deserves Nice Things, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:49:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26382169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gyptian/pseuds/Gyptian
Summary: Why this threesome stayed with me. It's not about the sex. It's everything that came before, after and around.Part 1: loving triangle that centers the friendship.
Relationships: Maria DeLuca & Alex Manes, Maria DeLuca/Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	That Malexa Scene

Please remember the following is personal reflection upon an aspect of a fictional work.

**Season 1, Loving triangle that centers friendship  
**

The Roswell reboot's treatment of the love triangle between Michael Guerin, Alex Manes and Maria DeLuca fascinated me in season one. The show did not go for the cheap drama of romantic rivalry, pitting the 'rightness' of two very different relationships against each other.

Such bad writing would've made the subplot extremely fraught. Michael's 'choice' would have been between a heterosexual woman of colour who's his love interest in the original show and a gay, disabled Air Force Officer who's the current fan darling. The show would have inadvertently encouraged racism, ableism or homophobia, even if it had tried to avoid the 'choice' by either burying their gay or black character, or both, for maximum byronic Michael.

Given the trope's momentum, the fandom already didn't escape misogynoir in the corner that favoured the slashier leg of the triangle. Not that that was unique to this show. I'm looking at you, Uhura bashers. Including you, past self.

No, our bisexual alien cowboy gets to be copacetic with his queerness and in love with two people and is never shamed or tested for it by the narrative. Spotlight's not on him for this triangle.

Instead, the show makes the stakes of the conflict the lifelong friendship between Alex and Maria, thus respecting what it means to both characters. It's a rare acknowledgment of the importance of the platonic relationships on several levels, gay-het friendship, male-female friendship and interracial friendship*.

Maria, woman of colour, is portrayed as worrying about breaking the bro code as much as any on-screen white man, and worries she will hurt and lose an old friend over a new lover. This female character has realistic relationship priorities, not what she'd have were she only a love interest, as too many women are in Hollywood. She gets to love the man who consistently supported her in carrying the heaviest load in her life – her mother's care, just as she supported him through his family's homophobia. She also gets to fall for the chivalrous barfly with Kirk's shirt-loss syndrome who brightens her day and has the hots for her entrepreneurial acumen and emotional intelligence*. Her happy end, in the finale, is being allowed to try and have both friend and lover.

Alex, still-closeted gay man, gets to be at the start of his coming-out journey. Our modern-day prince Jonathan gets to be the courageous warrior, alternately obey and stand up to his overbearing, delusional patriarch and poetically declare his love for his soulmate* as much as his biblical counterpart. At the same time, he also gets to have the low self-esteem and all the unhealthy coping mechanisms and all the ways those hurt his relationships. He gets to discover, the hard way, that he loves Michael more than he hates himself and clumsily reach out and try to make the first stumbling steps in going after what he wants. He gets to express his honest wish that the people he loves are happy together while also discovering he's jealous, has issues.

Alex, moreover, gets to take the strength of character he honed by being in active combat and recovering from the loss of his leg, and apply them to facing his end-level boss, his dad and his childhood. He gets to seek out his safe relationships, Maria, Mimi, Liz and strengthen them again. He gets to reconcile with a love he lost, lose it *again* to his own unhealthy coping mechanisms, face up to them and try again, four times - offering Michael friendship, the interrupted confession post-Caulfield and its reprise at the start of season two. Finally, successfully, when Michael accepts his offer to make researching and reconciling with their pasts a group project.

Over the course of season one, Alex and Maria's friendship remains true. It allows the characters several moments of support in their tumultuous lives. The bond between the two forms the backbone when they reunite as the Three (Surviving) Musketeers of Colour in Racist Town, when Liz returns to Roswell.

Alex and Maria find their friendship tested by loving the same man, in the back half of season one, and they resolve their conflict by the middle of season two, during their road trip. Alex has discovered part of his jealousy is towards Michael, for loving Maria as he never could. Maria is on her way to discovering the source of what was her largest fear, her mother's (seeming) delusions about aliens. They have rediscovered the rock-solid support they have in each other.

The love triangle isn't a plot device to spice up a formulaic romance subplot, but to dive into a life-long friendship between two complex characters.

A viewer might be forgiven for considering the Alex and Maria sharing the man they love between them simply a celebration. It does make for a rather spectacular and sex-positive resolution of this particular subplot. That was my first impression. Sexual healing for two best friends and the man they love. Fantastic, lovely, wouldn't change a thing, moving on.

Then it stayed with me.

**Author's Note:**

> *I am aware Alex is part Native American, which becomes more prominent in season 2. Season 1, he very much registered with me as the son of a white homophobe.  
> *Head-canon: all 'good' folks in Roswell are sapiosexual (i.e. intelligence and competence is attractive), a motif, to contrast with the villains' promotion of ignorance and stupidity.  
> *English bible translations friend-zone Jonathan and David. Others emphasise the depth of their love and leave its exact shape open for interpretation. So yes, same-sex soulmates is canon in my native-language holy text, as well as a close reading of the source-language text. Go figure.


End file.
